Policies

My short response to the Ordnance Survey data consultation I think the phrase “making public data public” says it all. When a tautology is radical it’s an oblique way of saying we’re in the wrong place. The UK needs vibrant emerging online services built on universally applicable data sets which the taxpayer has paid for […]

Ha! The clever old Tories have just raised the bar several notches in our highly specific ideal-gov world. The “makeitbetter” site, where we were all invited to pile in to point out the glaring shortcomings in a leaked draft government IT strategy, has struck an unexpected positive note with the addition of an “our proposed […]

It’s time to say what we want from government IT. Let’s do this together. Let’s say “wouldn’t it be better if” about how tech affects transparency, costs and the quality of public services and how they affect our lives. @ntouk and I have long since been fed up with what one senior Whitehall official yesterday […]

At the invitation of IPS and Intellect I gave a Ctrl-Shift talk about the role of the individual in future public services. It’s material that will be familiar to the IdealGov posse, but I was apprehensive because this is a close-knit community very focussed on large contracts and not known for welcoming alternate views. We […]

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In a speech yesterday Michael Wills (whom I dont know myself, but he’s Labour member of Parliament for Swindon North, and a Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice) called for a new, more courteous and respectful dialogue over government’s use of personal data. IdealGovernment has wanted this for years. But – as he […]

Paul Clarke writes thoughtfully here about the confusion/agitation/frustration surrounding arrest of an architectural photographer for taking pictures of Merrill Lynch building in London this morning (in the light of recent clarification by ACPO that anti terror laws should not be used to stop photographers in public places). Comments refer to the fuzziness between private security firms […]

At first glance the new Smarter Government white paper looks pretty refreshing. The stuff on freeing up data is good: ‘Public data’ are ‘government-held non-personal data that are collected or generated in the course of public service delivery’. Our public data principles state that: * Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form * […]

From The Times Francis Maude, the shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, has written to Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, calling for a moratorium on the £100bn of government IT contracts in the pipeline. This raises a load of questions. What’s the list of contracts? Is it complete and definitive? One can imagine suppliers […]

@NTOUK and @williamheath are heartily fed up with half-baked government IT strategies. Having to read the current proposal is the last straw. Modernising Govt promised the same in 1999. The 2009 draft Government ICT Strategy – New world, new challenges, new opportunities seems oddly detached from the pressing discussions under way about public services renewal. […]

The storm clouds that lashed the fat-cat bankers and expense-extracting MPs may now be shifting over to government IT suppliers with excessive profit margins and senior government IT staff with over-generous pay packages. The Daily Mail had a pop at Mike Mackay of the Youth Justice Board in August (and fair enough, I’d have thought, […]